This is Duncan. Gordon and I met him and his brother Duffy last year when we were in Maine. He is cute and very loving. He would not like to hear that his food might make him sick. He would also not like the way the pet food company is handling the situation. Here is an article I just read about the recall. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/308221_petfoodrecall20.html
Now, I guess this is my problem. Menu Foods started receiving calls about this in December and now it's March and they've just recalled the food. In addition, they apparently lied to the FDA about when the calls started coming in so it looked like they just jumped right on the problem and started new testing a week later. To top it all off, that testing was done on 40-50 otherwise presumably healthy dogs and cats, exposing more animals to food that has obviously sickened a number of pets already... So maybe I don't know anything about figuring out if something is wrong with food or not, but if it were, say, shredded wheat and the company that made it had been getting calls for a couple of months, I seriously doubt it would be considered a good idea to just feed it to a test group of people for a while and then see how many of them died. And yet that's what this pet food company chose to do and nobody seems to be at all concerned about it. Pet owners are worried about their own pets, but where is the outrage over several news outlets reporting a line such as "1 in 6 animals died in tests..." I mean, how can we can read these articles and not be appalled? They already had plenty of evidence that the food was poisoning animals- isn't there some way of testing the ingredients in the food that they suspected might be the cause of the illnesses instead of feeding it to animals to see how many of them die? Am I crazy, or does this seem completely absurd and unnecessarily cruel? Is there another way to see this that I'm just missing? Any thoughts?
Once upon a time, my friend Andrea (left) and I (right) were enjoying a fine afternoon on a high school field trip to the Georgia Renaissance Festival when we spotted the sign for Sherwood Stage. At the time we probably only chose to take our picture with the sign to bring back for our friend Blair Sherwood (seen here as my prom date), but I'm pretty sure it was foreshadowing, for lo! A few short years hence, I'm moving to Sherwood Forest! =) Okay, so maybe I'm not exactly moving into the forest (and maybe it's been a little longer than a few short years), but Gordon and I shall be moving to Nottingham, in County Nottinghamshire, the home of one Robin 
Hood and his band of merry men! =) (I love merry men! And by merry, I mean gay. I'll bet they have really good clubs there.) There are all kinds of variations on the story of Robin Hood, but I feel that either the Disney one (where the main characters were cartoon foxes and bears and sang a lot) or the Kevin Costner one (where the main character had a little trouble maintaining a convincing English accent) are surely the most accurate. (Obviously Cary Elwes's representation was farcical and therefore not considered in my serious contemplation of the subject.) Perhaps my opinions are skewed by the fact that those are the only versions of the story with which I am familiar, but I am comforted by the fact that there is much to learn about the man (and his men) in Nottinghamshire. First, there is the Robin Hood Festival held each summer, where I can watch various and sundry medievaly events such as jousting whilst wearing an adorable green chapeau and gnawing on weaponry (and my fingers) like 
these two festival-going cutie pies. Second, there is the Tales of Robin Hood tourist attraction on Maid Marion Way in Nottingham, where I can "ride through medieval Nottingham in unique adventure cars and see, hear, touch and smell expertly captured scenes" from the times of Mr. Hood. Third and finally, if that doesn't satisfy my yen to learn about Britain's most famous outlaw in tights (though how could it not with all of the seeing and smelling?), there is actually a master's degree in Robin Hood offered at the very prestigious University of Nottingham (though I'm sure I'd have to have a bachelor's in something important or wear my Chamber Singers dress from high school to get into it). Needless to say, there will be plenty of non-outlaw related activities in the 'Shire, and I'll be sure to report on those at a later date. But with so much Hood in our 'hood, how can our friends and family stay away? =) See you there! =) (Shirt and tights required.) 
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